This Man Knows What’s Coming to Australia and the Global Economy

Markets calmed a little overnight. The instigator of much of the day-to-day trouble, oil, took a day off, falling ‘only’ 1%. That’s a reasonably subdued move for oil these days.

Gold was the big mover. It jumped nearly US$30 an ounce or just over 2.3%. The release of the Fed’s minutes (from its last interest rate meeting) was behind the surge. Here’s the quote the market focused on:

‘Several participants noted that monetary policy was less well positioned to respond effectively to shocks that reduce inflation or real activity than to upside shocks, and that waiting for additional information regarding the underlying strength of economic activity and prospects for inflation before taking the next step to reduce policy accommodation would be prudent,’

In other words, The Fed is concerned about the recent market turmoil and doesn’t want to raise interest rates anytime soon.

Who could’ve known?

I say that in jest. But there were plenty of professional ‘commentators’ saying not too long ago that the US economy was strong and a rising interest rate cycle was upon us. It turns out we got one rate rise before everything turned to…dirt.

One man who saw this coming a while ago was my mate and Markets and Money co-editor Vern Gowdie. Vern’s been banging on about the deflationary forces impacting Australia and the global economy for ages.

Last year, he published a book about it. He called it, The End of Australia: The Real Story Behind Australia’s Coming Economic Collapse and how to Survive It.

15,000 Australians read that book. It really hit a chord. We sold out of our physical stock quickly. If you missed out, you can still download an electronic version here, free of charge.

Since publishing the book in mid-2015, many of Vern’s predictions have played out. The global economy is doing just what Vern said it would.

The reason behind the economic improvement relates to the housing boom and the big increase in household debt that produced the boom.

An increase in debt reflects an increase of money flowing around the economy. As this money changes hands in exchange for various goods and services, it produces an increase in jobs (in the sectors involved) and an increase in economic growth.

But if this economic activity stems from an interest rate cutting cycle, which produces a major increase in asset prices, is it not a little complacent to believe that the benefits will be lasting?

I think it is. But complacency has been an Aussie trademark for years. We’ve mistaken luck for good management. We want to acknowledge the prosperity but not the debt behind it.

As Vern points out in his book, this is not an attitude that will serve us well in the future.

Politicians, for all their ignorance, know this. That’s why the battle for reform is underway. Labor kicked things off in earnest by announcing reforms to negative gearing this week.

The Libs have responded with…not much at all actually. They’ve put GST reform in the too hard basket and they’re too scared to go to the election with negative gearing reform.

The whole debate about negative gearing is hilarious. Instead of a serious discussion about the pros and cons, all you’re seeing is desperate attempts by special interest groups to maintain the perk.

The fact that the Libs defend negative gearing because it will impact ‘ordinary Australian’s like nurses and teachers is laughable. When have the Libs ever cared about them!

Saul Eslake debunks this myth in today’s Financial Review:

‘Proponents of negative gearing routinely assert that it is primarily used by taxpayers of ‘comparatively modest’ means to ‘get ahead’, that it makes a ‘vital contribution’ to ensuring an adequate supply of rental housing, and that without it rents would ‘go through the roof’, as they allegedly did between 1985 and 1987 when the Hawke Government temporarily abolished it.

‘None of these assertions withstands a moment’s confrontation with the facts.

‘The latest available ABS data, which are for 2013-14, show that 72 per cent of the total value of investment properties is owned by, and 50.7 per cent of the total value is owed by, the richest 20 per cent of households – many of whom use negative gearing, and other strategies, to reduce their taxable incomes.

‘That’s one reason why the assertion that nearly 80 per cent of taxpayers who use negative gearing have taxable incomes of less than $80,000 is misleading.’

The Libs favour the wealthy. They want to protect negative gearing because it bestows the rents that come from land value on the relatively wealthy few. It has nothing to do with fairness and everything to do with maintaining a system that enriches the landowner at the expense of the indebted and the landless.

For that reason, I doubt the policy will change. There are just too many vested interests involved and they will lie, scratch and kick to make sure nothing changes.

If you want to find out more about how the issue of land rents work, and how it affects you, Cycles Trends and Forecasts editor Phil Anderson knows more about it than anyone else in Australia. You can click here to find out more.

Greg Canavan is a Contributing Editor at Markets & Money and Head of Research at Port Phillip Publishing.
He advocates a counter-intuitive investment philosophy based on the old adage that ‘ignorance is bliss’.
Greg says that investing in the ‘Information Age’ means you now have all the information you need. But is it really useful? Much of it is noise, and serves to confuse rather than inform investors.
And, through the process of confirmation bias, you tend to sift the information that you agree with. As a result, you reinforce your biases. This gives you the impression that you know what is going on. But really, you don’t know. No one does. The world is far too complex to understand.
When you accept this, your newfound ignorance becomes a formidable investment weapon. That’s because you’re not a slave to your emotions and biases.
Greg puts this philosophy into action as the Editor of Crisis & Opportunity. He sees opportunities in crises. To find the opportunities, he uses a process called the ‘Fusion Method’, which combines charting analysis with more conventional valuation analysis.
Charting is important because it contains no opinions or emotions. Combine that with traditional stock analysis, and you have a robust stock selection strategy.
With Greg’s help, you can implement a long-term wealth-building strategy into your financial planning, be better prepared for the financial challenges ahead, and stop making the same mistakes that most private investors do every time they buy a stock.
To find out more about Greg’s investing style and his financial worldview, take out a free subscription to Markets & Money here.
And to discover more about Greg’s ‘ignorance is bliss’ investment strategy and the Fusion Method of investing, take out a 30-day trial to his value investing service Crisis & Opportunity here.
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